http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cj6um9y558

This is the original scene that my final is based on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJfORxWsZUY&feature=related

*Note: I know there are no gunshots sounds at the end, but I couldnt manage to overlap the effects over the music without throwing off the whole sequence and musical cues. It came down to a choice, and I decided to throw out the effects. Maybe when I have more time over break I’ll re-edit it.

Let me just say that I’m a pretty reasonable person, post-election hangover or not. I like art, even modern art. But there are certain limits to which I will call objects or instalations “art.” Just because a piece inspires me to think in a new way does not mean it deserves the right to be called art. To me, art is a celebration of style, technique, dedication, and skill. While I’m sure some, if not most, of the pieces took a long time to complete, I’m almost positive that just about anyone could have accidentally created some of these “pieces.”

For example, Joseph Kosuth’s “Box, Cube, Empty, Clear, Glass – a Description” is to me more of an example of a literal interpretation of a rorsach test than art. Four, glass boxes, arranged side by side, with different adjectives written on them. Each describes a characteristic or quality of the box, with each being interchangable with the other. Simply put, the sheer simplicity of this piece is both astounding and enraging. Yes, I understand that a Glass Cube is clear, empty, or a box. It did not challenge me in any sense of the word. It was like listening to a stuck up professor explaining in a long-winded fashion that which is not only obvious but also common knowledge.

The second offending piece is Lawrence Weiner’s “REDUCED, Cat. No. 102.” A simple placement of vinyl letters on the wall. Ah, brilliant Lawrence, you’ve made it work on another level because the word means smaller but it is in a large font. Congradulations, you’re essentially tricked the art curator into believing that a game where the word red is spelled in yellow letters is a piece of art that demands attention.

Again…I like art, even modern art. But I’m drawing a line in the sand here. Other people can choose to fawn and orgasm over “art” such as this, but not me. This is the kind of modern art that gives modern art a bad name in my opinion.

I did this because vinyl records are noted for their grainy and at times distorted sound. Since my narrative is about playing a record, I figured I might as well make the visuals as distorted and aged as the record I was playing.

Also, since I only had two people to work with for the project, I decided to only use one of them in the actual film. The framing of the subjectg looking through the frame shaped by the books and her look of disgust implies the location of other people.

For the other films, we used more social settings such as the Tavern specifically. In order to keep the number of lines memorized to an absolute minimum, most of these films were shot from a distance, with the actors over-exaggerating their actions to get the narrative across. This was done especially well with physical actions such as pushing, shoving, and in one case, punching.

In general, I feel that most of my groups films tried to follow the idea of “less is more” and “it’s not what you see/hear, but what you don’t see/hear that drives the story.”

This design illustrates movement and analogous color scheme. The close proximity of the Wall-Es, along with the way each one leads the eye to the next creates the illusion of movement. The fact that the smaller Wall-E’s are technically behind the wire framed background and that the larger one is in the foreground creates helps forward the idea that the Wall-Es are moving forward, giving a sense of depth to the design. I noticed that while the background was only white, blue, and black, Wall-E was yellow, grey, and black. All I had to do to make the color scheme analogous was to change the hue so that Wall-E’s body was blue, and he naturally became analogous to the background.

This design illustrates Asymmetry and Complimentary color scheme. The haphazard placement of the Wall-Es does not reflect any methodical or purposeful placement. There is no movement, no symmetry, nor is there any rhythm. For the color scheme, I decided to stick with another bluish background, since all I would have to do is saturate the yellow colors on Wall-E’s body (aka the same process I did with the previous design) to create a complimentary color scheme.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2118882&id=7411731&ref=mf

I really liked this first shot I got of Wall-E here. I was reading up on the movie and the creators said they designed Wall-E the way he was because his binocular-like eyes could express emotions without any other facial features. I lit the item from the right side with a single key light from high above looking down in order to make it seem that Wall-E was cowering away from some unseen person. I framed this photo as a Long Shot, although I also noticed that when I technically removed his “legs” manually it could also possibly constitute as a Medium Long Shot.

This next shot I liked because of the surprise opposite effect I created with lighting and camera angle. Here, Wall-E is lit from both hih right and level left sides and the camera looks down upon him. This Bird’s Eye View normally implies weakness, but because oh his pose, Wall-E appears more innocent and contemplative than weak.

The third shot is a Medium Shot with a strong key light from the left side of the picture. I feel that it was nearly impossible not to capture Wall-E’s child-like qualities, no matter which way I posed him.

This last shot is a Medium Close Up of Wall-E. Again I really like the way Wall-E never seems cold and lifeless, but rather more child than machine. For this shot I took the brighter light I used for the right side key light and moved it to the left side to give a strong shadow to Wall-E.

I really enjoyed the pictures of the paintings. The color schemes and the shapes helped break up the precise order of a lot of the other pictures like the shower curtain and the wood floor. My personal favorite pics would definately have to be the onese where there is exact symmetry, but with random bits of asymmetry. Specifically, the art cutting board and guitar amp really were cool to photograph. In retrospect, I’d wish that I had taken more angles of the art cutting board, since flipping or rotating the board gives so many different perspectives since the main backdrop is just a grid.

One of the pictures that I really liked also was the third painting. It was interesting how the repetition of one shape over and over and the intense layering managed to produce a pattern that seems all jumbled and random, yet there is still unity in that all the rectangles for the most part are nearly the same.

The first of the short films I saw was a short by Ian Charlesworth simply titled John. This short consisted of an Irish teenager on a bare stage being asked to renact or act out certain situations as the director told him to. Aside from the fact that John never really moves from the center of the screen, the darkness of his clothes combined with the bareness of the set made the film really dreary, but also highly monochromatic and monotonous. It was interesting to note that while all John had to do was be himself in various situations, he found certain scenarios to be especially challenging, particularly the scene where the director asked him to renact being called out as a bully by the principal. John stayed in character for less than a minute before he stopped and told Charlesworth that he simply couldnt do it.

This was interesting because it showed (at least to me) that we truly depend on our visual sense in order to recall. Im sure if John had another actor on screen, or if he was at a school he might have been able to do better during the bully sequence, but since it was just him on a blank stage, it proved difficult. This made me wonder about the complexities both actors and directors face when dealing with greenscreen effects. Specifically, this made me recall the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a movie that was almost entirely shot on greenscreen.  All in all, I found John to be more contemplative, but not highly enjoyable.

The next film I saw was Kerry Tribe’s Double. This film, like John, it consisted of mostly single actresses against a color backdrop talking. In this case though, the film showed me how certain aspects of film can make us suspend our disbelief. The five women are all supposed to look like Kerry Tribe, yet I noticed that many of them had different hairstyles, but they all had brown hair and nose rings. Also the consistent use of the red backdrop helped the viewer draw a correlation with all the women. However, the lack of camera motion made the whole short feel like some talking head segment on some trivial tribute to the 1980s on VH1.

The next film I saw was Mungo Thomson’s New York, New York, New York, New York. This film was quite possibly the most boring and in my opinion unartistic film of the six I chose to review. This film exhibit comprised of four screens showing simultaneous shots of backlot sets designed to look like New York City. While the small explanation at the exhibit told the reader that if you look closely you can tell that the scenes are not actually in New York City, it was painfully obvious to me at least, and I’m not from NYC either. The movement, energy, sounds, nearly everything that makes New York what it is was completely absent. This made me realize that if someone showed me a scene of the New York Stock Exchange and it was completely empty, even if it actually did take place in the real Stock Exchange floor, I would not believe it because it lacked the human element to it.

The first film that I actually managed to enjoy was Candice Breitz’s Mother + Father. This exhibit was very itneresting, in that it was comprised of multiple (six to be exact) screens, each showing famous scenes from “tearjerker” movies that gave the illusion that the characters where speaking to each other. The fact that each character had their own designated screen, and that when one screen “spoke”, the previous screen turned blank. This helped give the illusion that of a camera moving in from one close up to the next, and even occasionally allowing two, three, or even all the screens to play at once, bringing life and movement to the film.

The next film that i enjoyed was Isaac Julien’s Fantome Creole. This film played out like someone took all the shots from a montage of some unknown Werner Herzog movie and divided the scenes onto four different screens. This was interesting to note that while the juxtaposition of scenes of an African wasteland and Arctic tundra both showed bleakness and a certain air of forboding, the colors also seemed to match each other in tone. Both warm (African landscape) and cool (Arcitc tundra) colors both gave the viewer the feeling of isolation and discomfort.

The last, and personal favorite, of the films I saw was Runa Islam’s Tuin. This exhibit showed a scene from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Martha, and Islam’s attempt to recreate the scene. However, unlike Fassbinder’s scene, Islam actually allows the viewer to see the camera and crew that make the shot possible. This makes helps break the illusion of the “dreamlike” movement of Fassbinder’s sequence. This made me think about other ways in which camera work helps bring about ideas of realism or dreamlike states, such as in John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix, in which the cameras were strapped to the front bumper of some cars to give the audience a feeling of literally racing in the Grand Prix.

I’d have to say that while the some of the films I found lacking and others to be quite insightful, nothing helped me realize that film can distort reality than when I purchased a DVD of the complete music video collection of Spike Jonze from the gift shop for $30. A price like that felt like fiction, but man was that real. I’m looking forward to not only watching that DVD, but to also get a chance to see if I can break out my old camcorder and see if I can capture a sense of “realism” as well.